GRAND TROPHY: Complete Lycian Coast by Sea Kayaking
Göcek(Skopea) - Phaselis (Tekirova): MYTHICAL PLAYGROUND IN THE MEDITERRANEAN
2-week Sea Kayaking EXPEDITION for experienced paddlers: subject to 6 kayakers minimum
TWO OPTIONS: SEA KAYAK CAMPING or MOTHER-SHIP BASED
Lycia is a mountainous and densely forested region along the coast of southwestern Turkey on and around the Teke Peninsula. It is bounded by Caria to the west and north west, Pamphylia to the east, and Pisidia to the north east.
Ancient Lycia encompasses the sea-girt bulge that
runs from Ekincik and ancient Caunos around as far as Antalya, a
semi-circle of some of the most mountainous and wild landscape to be
encountered anywhere in Turkey.
It is a region hemmed in by mountains. On the west and east two high
mountain ridges, the tallest peaks standing well over 3000 meters
(10,000 feet) high, cut off Lycia from neighboring Caria to the west
and Pamphylia to the east. In the north a lower but no less rugged
range and a great plateau cut Lycia off from central Anatolia. Around
the coast a series of mountain ranges drop precipitously into the sea
and though the peaks are not as high as those in the interior, the
aspect from seaward is of an inhospitable coast. Right into early
summer the highest peaks in Lycia, Akdag in the west and Bey Dagi
(ancient Mt Solymnus) in the east, are covered in snow on the highest
slopes.
The Lycian coast has often been referred to as the 'pirate
coast', and with it's many strategically sited coves and islands
where these sea-raiders could lie in wait for plump merchant ships
tramping up and down the coast, it deserves the epithet. Numerous
campaigns were mounted to clean up the coast from as early as 1194 BC
right up until the 19th century. A relief at Medinet Habu in the Nile
delta records how Ramses III put together a great fleet to take on the
Lukka and decisively defeated them, leaving the coast free of piracy
for a while. When Xerxes assembled his huge force for the invasion of
Greece in 480 BC the Lycians contributed fifty ships and Herodotus
gives us this tantalizing description of the piratical bunch that
manned them:
"They wore greaves and corsets; they carried bows of cornel wood, cane
arrows without feathers, and javelins. They had goatskin slung round
their shoulders, and hats stuck round with feathers. They also carried
daggers and rip-hooks."
Piracy is again mentioned in the 5th century BC, but it is not until
the Roman occupation of Asia Minor that attempts were again made to
bring it under control. In 78 BC a campaign was mounted by Servilius
Vatia, governor of Cilicia, and though he had moderate success, it did
little to check it. In 67 BC Pompey, an able and intelligent admiral,
was given wide-ranging powers and almost unlimited resources to tackle
the piracy problem, which he did with total success. However Pompey
was reluctant to give up his power and his ships and became himself
something of a thorn in the Senate's side. After the fall of Rome the
Lycian coast once again became a haven for pirate fleets and not until
the 18th and 19th centuries and the presence of the British Navy was
the piracy problem again tackled and the Lycian coast cleaned up.
In this remote region the sites of over forty cities have been found
and much remains to identify the culture of the Lycians. The most
obvious features of the Lycian landscape are the tombs and sarcophagi
left behind. They are everywhere and it is difficult not to think of
the region as a vast necropolis peopled with the shadowy figures of
Lycian nobles and warriors. Ancestor-worship was evidently important
to the Lycians and the tombs are extravagant affairs, the more
grandiose decorated with a frieze and inscriptions placing a curse
upon anyone tampering with the tomb. Five distinct types of tomb can
be distinguished: pillar-tombs, temple-tombs, house-tombs, pigeon-hole
tombs, and the ubiquitous sarcophagi. Pillar-tombs are specific to
Lycia and consist of a long tapering pillar set on a stone base with
the grave chamber at the top. These were for important dynasts and the
best examples are at Xanthos. Temple-tombs are maybe the most
impressive of the Lycian tombs and consist of a temple facade with a
grave chamber behind it. Those at Caunos are the most romantically
sited while those at Fethiye the most accessible. House-tombs were
modeled on the wooden houses of the Lycians and so give us some idea
of what everyday accommodation was like several thousand years ago.
They are smaller than the temple-tombs, though often several stories
high, and the stone has been hewn to imitate wooden roof beams and the
doorway and portico. The house-tombs were sometimes decorated with
relieves and painted as at Myra where fragments of a painted relief
have miraculously survived. Pigeon-hole tombs were the down-market
version of temple and house tombs, small unadorned chambers cut into a
cliff-face. The best examples are at Pinara where the cliffs are
literally pock-marked by these tombs. Sarcophagi are found everywhere:
scattered over hill-sides, on the summits of hills, by the shore, and
in the sea where the land has subsided. The older sarcophagi are the
largest with massive stone bases, grave chambers, and heavy lids often
with a peaked 'gothic' look to them. In Roman times the sarcophagi
became smaller and less ornate, perhaps as the importance of
ancestor-worship declined.
The Lycians and Lycian culture faded into vague folk-memories of a
proud and independent people who had built great stone cities and
buried their dead in magnificent tombs. Not until those intrepid
travelers of the 19th century, Francis Beaufort, Charles Newton,
Thomas Spratt and Edward Forbes, was the existence and extent of
Lycian culture to be brought to the notice of the west.
The Terrestrial Biodiversity of the Lycian Coast
The Marine Biodiversity of the Lycian Coast
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